This study examines the relationship between the work of Pliny the Elder and Marc Lescarbot’s Histoire de la Nouvelle-France. Among the many works cited by the erudite lawyer, the annals of the Roman naturalist stand out as constituting a veritable encyclopedia of universal knowledge. Curiously, Lescarbot, who sees in the Natural History a model to imitate, is not afraid to commit to paper the tales and exaggerations that it contains, if only to set himself apart from them. The importance of the French traveller’s indebtedness to his Latin predecessor can be explained not only by the authority that the latter enjoyed at the beginning of the Grand Siècle, but also by an agreement of thought: very much like the Roman, the Frenchman from Vervins castigates the deceptive behaviour and the taste for luxury so widespread among his contemporaries.

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

• Pioffet, M., (2025), "Marc Lescarbot sur les traces de Pline l'Ancien", HSSCommons: (DOI: )

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1. Renaissance and Reformation

Original publication: Pioffet, Marie-Christine. "Marc Lescarbot sur les traces de Pline l'Ancien." Renaissance and Reformation 36 (3): 2020. 5-15. DOI: 10.33137/rr.v36i3.8632. This material has been re-published in an unmodified form on the Canadian HSS Commons with the permission of Iter Canada / Renaissance and Reformation. Copyright © the author(s). Their work is distributed by Renaissance and Reformation under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. For details, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/.